-------- Original Message --------
Subject: How to label map cases, drawer and folders?
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 19:46:53 -0400
From: Michael Fry <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: UMD Libraries
To: Maps and Air Photo Systems Forum <[log in to unmask]>

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I'm curious if people provide detailed shelf lists or indexes for
individual drawers and folders...

Our collection of several hundred thousand maps is largely uncataloged,
and the catalog's few
records are vague--patrons are told what floor to go to for a map, and
that's it. Whatever add'l
finding aids we have--floor plans, indexes, shelf lists, drawer labels,
my memory, etc.--are
entirely homemade. We have ~600 drawers of maps, each of which contains
as many as 10 folders. A
folder, in turn, may contain a handful of maps, or it may hold dozens.

My predecessor indexed--in ink--each and every map on the outside of its
respective folder (e.g.,
title, SuDoc, scale, date, etc.). From a user standpoint, these indexes
are handy and useful, esp.
when you're working with large series with lots of sheets (e.g., AMS).
 From an administrative
standpoint, however, they're messy, difficult to maintain and utterly
anathema to the digital world.
To wit: I've recently acquired several AMS series, and since I've
already made indexes in Excel, I'm
not anxious to do the same thing by hand!

But...I haven't yet imagined an alternative that I think would be as
useful and usable as the
current system. Printed indexes for each folder would be more modern and
easier to maintain, but
they wouldn't be inextricably connected to the folders themselves, and
wouldn't be as immediately
visible as are indexes written right onto the folders themselves.

Any ideas? What do *you* do?

Thanks!
mf
--
Michael Fry
Government Documents & Maps Librarian
University of Maryland Libraries